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Home Again So Its Data Time

MarathonFoto put up race pictures today. See me suffer. $60 for one digital print. How crazy!

I imported my GPS data from the race into SportTracks and ran the High Score plugin over it to see where my best splits occurred. Its just kind of fun to see.

Distance

Time

Pace (min/mi)

Start (mi)

End (mi)

1 Mile

00:06:37

00:06:35

25.367

26.372

5k

00:20:42

00:06:39

23.255

26.362

10k

00:41:50

00:06:43

11.371

17.585

10 Miles

01:07:37

00:06:45

16.358

26.362

1/2 Marathon

01:28:36

00:06:45

11.262

24.373

Check out that fastest mile. Last mile of the race! That’s right were you want it to be. However, since you can’t see the finish line until that last turn I was staying on pace and didn’t light up the afterburners until I saw the finish and knew that cramp wasn’t coming back. Then I sort of kicked it up but also just enjoyed the scene on Boylston. That is why you run that course so I savored the moment just a bit.

1/2 marathon is a 7 minute PR. That PR from last fall was soft from the wind that day anyway. But so glad to see sub-1:30. I started racing doing halves and I thought sub-1:30 would never come. I don’t think its fair to list that as my PR though. I will have to run a true 1/2 one of these days to get a PR. Probably shave some time off of that since I will be able to cover only half the distance of Boston. Glad to see it feel pretty solidly in the 2nd half of the race. I knew I had a negative split going.

Looking at true mile by mile splits from the race now! Remember 6:50 was the average for the race.

Slowest was mile #1 at 7:07. This was mostly because Glenn told me not to go out fast so I wanted to be sure I listened to him and could prove I did so. That advice was good for 1 mile I guess. The 2nd slowest — or really slowest given I wasn’t holding back — was mile 21 at Heartbreak Hill. Its a hill, you run slower. I was 0:16 off goal pace for the mile. Sounds about right.

Fastest pace was that last 0.2 miles into the finish line. Pace dropped to 6:21. Not bad but I should have dropped into the 5’s. Mile 16 and then 22 were the fastest miles coming in at 6:37-8. Mile 16 has the 2nd biggest drop in elevation (-133 feet) besides the starting mile (-137 feet) where I was holding back. Mile 22 (-84 feet) was coming off Heartbreak.

16 of the splits were under goal pace. 1 at goal pace. Leaving 9 over goal pace. Seems like a pretty fair breakdown as I tried to manage the pace early and knock away at the cut-down deficit. Then allowed myself some slack as I hit goal pace time. Then kicked it in again later on in anticipation of slowing at the hills. I did the usual deal where I focus on each mile interval to try and get it to clock it right at goal or slightly below. However, I found myself more often slowing down in order to get what I needed. In Denver for the BQ, I was constantly having to speed up 5-6 seconds to get where I needed to be. Hmm, what could have been.

Well, I won’t analyze this anymore — at least in public. But I needed to see how the numbers looked when I had a chance to sit down with them. Overall, I am very pleased with the training, the strategy, the execution, and the race. I really feared going into the race that my lack of specific goal pace runs was going to nail me. But it didn’t end up making a dent. Or that all those Green Mountain runs would come back and bite me like the naysayers predicted. They didn’t. I just have a few tweaks that I might apply in the future.

We flew today so I didn’t lace up. Tomorrow! It begins with a few recovery runs to see how things feel. Might do some adhoc things here for a few days just to enjoy myself. Might show up at a race or two. Then I need to sit and focus on Lake City and more importantly Leadville. Those are the next big dates on the calendar and while I have a great start, I have a lot of work to do — if I want to walk away from those feeling as good as I did about Boston!